Barrington Bayley - The Garments of Caean

But suddenly the ruffian ceased his assault and looked sidelong at something to Mast’s left. Mast followed his gaze. A woman was walking the floor of the city, making for a twisted tower some distance off. Her movements were swaying and willowy, and her long graceful robe, with its streaming pagoda sleeves, made her seem as if she were being bent by the wind. Gauzy veils were blowing away from her face, which was dreamy and distant.

The ruffian reached up and removed his straw hat, stuffing it into a pocket in the seat of his trousers, from which he drew another piece of headgear. This was an abbreviated cloth casque, or galea, boasting a modest panache and decorated with ornate ribwork of gold. As he placed the casque on his head, adjusting it carefully, an amazing transformation came over him. No longer was he gormless and belligerent. The light of intelligence came to his eye. His back straightened, and his features moulded themselves into a different countenance. He was a new man.

At the same time he was tugging at the frills of his chemise, altering it into a different type of garment entirely. Gone from sight were the braggart braces, the insolent cut of the trousers waistband. The chemise became a sleek doublet, striped heliotrope and cyan, niched at the hem, the body purled with twisted cord of silver and cobalt. In proximity to these new colours the pink of the trousers took on a mauve tint; their cut seemed no longer boorish but elegant.

Now the essence of courtliness, and with perfect comportment, the erstwhile tough stepped to accost the fresh object of his interest, introducing himself with a bow and a flourish. He seemed to have forgotten Mast entirely.

Mast moved on, mingling with the sparse throng that was abroad in Yomondo, and pausing to watch what was happening on a raised platform. To pounding music young men performed a jerky, ritualistic dance. Their tight-fitting cladding blazed with baroque curlicues, arabesques of gold and silver glitter-work and glowing art-gems. Suddenly they stopped of one accord, clapping their hands over their heads. The platform – really the floor of a box skeleton – rose from the ground and swept vertically upwards, gathering speed. Mast now noticed many such aerial boxes gliding through Yomondo’s sky, guided by force-beams between the towers and air-ramps in seemingly meaningless, maze-like patterns. In each box a different but equally mysterious scene was taking place.

Not far from him a woman in the red and gold plumage of a tropical bird uttered a joyous shriek and took to the air, trailing fire behind her. He watched her trajectory as she went hurtling like a rocket right over the city, coming down on the far side. He found himself hoping she had made it safely.

At the centre of Yomondo was a great open square. Mast arrived there in time to witness the sudden evanescent crystallization of a crowd phenomenon. All present began to surge together, all turning to face the same direction. All faces, men’s and women’s, momentarily presented one identical face. A tribe-like dance step took hold of the mass of people. Forward… back… forward… back…

Then, as inexplicably as it had come, the spell dissipated. Everyone went his separate way, or undertook unfathomable activities with smaller groups.

Mast became aware that here, more than on any other Caeanic world he had visited, human nature had gone over the top; had taken a turn in a new, irrevocable direction. People no longer seemed to be human beings in the Ziodean sense of the word. They were loose collections of roles, play-actors switching parts at random, no longer having any visible conscious direction in their lives.

Clothes robots, he thought.

He wondered what Amara would make of this.

Peder could not quite plumb the psychological system by which Frachonard had designed his five Prossim suits. It was not a system a conventional psychologist would have devised had he wished to delineate the qualities of the human race – for such a delineation, complete within its own terms, was what the set of five undoubtedly comprised.

There was Peder himself, with his urbanity; there was the unbreakable will of Otis Weld, the caustic dryness and irony of Famaxer; there was Cy Amoroza Carendor and his athletic sprightliness, and the retiring imperturbability of Poloche Tam Trice. Yet these were only the most obtrusive characteristics. There were others. Each suit was itself a symphony of indefinable qualities, chosen according to concepts of humanity foreign to conventional thought, and all of which when taken together added up to an equally off-beat definition of human ability.

In a room where lilac light shone through turquoise windows, the five stood facing one another formally, as if arranged on the limbs of a pentagram. Peder could sense a communion between them; it was as if they were the various organs of one single man.

‘Only one more journey now,’ said Trice.

‘Then the bright new universe will begin.’

‘How shall we travel?’

‘I have met a harvester,’ Otis Weld said. ‘He will take us. He knows the location.’

‘Such people practise their trade in greatest secrecy. They can never be persuaded to accept passengers,’ Peder pointed out.

‘Us he cannot refuse. I know where his ship is. He will take us.’

‘Why delay?’ Carendor said lightly. ‘Let us embark on this ship now.’

They all concurred. ‘Yes. Let us go now.’

They left the building, Otis Weld leading the way.

Realto Mast had stopped for refreshment when he spotted Peder walking with four others dressed, as far as he could see, in identical suits.

At a gilt-bedecked booth he had bought a chunk of sweetened goldbread, washing it down with purple blackcurrant juice. The vendor, rigged out in a piratical costume and an eye-patch, had doubled the price on handing over the viands, speaking an archaic dialect and making good his demand by flourishing a fancy force-pistol, but Mast had paid up without argument.

Peder was just disappearing through a magenta arcade. Mast, gulping down the last of the goldbread, ran after him, calling his name in astonishment.

‘What are you doing here, Peder?’

Peder stopped, glancing after the retreating backs of his companions. He did not seem at all surprised to see Mast. ‘I am glad that you are broadening your mind by travel, Realto,’ he said, ‘but you really must get yourself some decent clothes.’

‘What? But this is the frock-coat you made for me, Peder. Don’t you remember? The trews are your work, too.’ He held his arms akimbo, displaying the garments.

‘Tawdry rags. You deserve better. You should dress like a Frachonard. And so you shall. I must go now, Realto. We have business to attend to. When I return I shall have something better for you to wear.’

‘You have business here, Peder? Where are you going?’ He paused, trying to think of some topic to detain the other. ‘Amara Corl thinks this planet is Caean’s wellspring.’

Peder smiled. ‘Not so, Realto. The wellspring is farther off. A secret, holy place.’

‘Oh?’ Mast opened his eyes wide in excitement. ‘Tell me more!’

But Peder padded away, ignoring Mast’s further questions.

Mast stood dazed and perplexed. The strangeness of this twittering city, with its crystalline purple atmosphere, its mass psychosis, struck him anew. Something was going on here. But what?

Cautiously, keeping his distance, he began to follow the five sartorial brothers.

‘You’re sure about this?’ frowned Amara, looking suspiciously at Mast.

By now she had been able to confirm for herself, from her probes’ first tentative talk-back, that Yomondo was an insane city.

‘I’ve told you what Forbarth said,’ Mast replied. ‘It agrees so perfectly with your theory. Besides, what’s Forbarth doing here? What’s he up to? I’ve already said there’s something special about that suit he wears. Why did the Caeanics try to recover it from Kyre? I’m pretty confident that’s what they were after. And here are five of them, all together in a bunch.’